Anne Kenshole

Me and my lab assistant

After house jobs at Guys with Rex Lawrie and Dr. Hardwick (the honorific still seems
appropriate in his case), I did obstetrics in Nottingham where I had my first exposure to diabetes and pregnancy. This ultimately led to a life-long interest in the management of medical diseases in pregnancy though at that time, the few brave women with “juvenile diabetes” who embarked on a pregnancy were admitted at 28 weeks and put on bed rest until they delivered a premature sickly baby. Neonatal resuscitation was limited to Brandy-infused midwives' breaths. Only 50% of the infants survived.

This was followed by a great year in Plymouth, mainly spent sailing and hiking on Dartmoor after which I decided to get some research experience by doing a BTC (Been To Canada). So, I came to Toronto to work in Intermediary Metabolism and 6 months later married Nick, the lab Chief. We have 2 children, one a teacher and one “in computers”, neither of whom ever had the slightest interest in doing medicine. I retired from the University of Toronto in 2010 as Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology but not being enamoured of the “R” state. I continue to see patients 3 days a week, do peer assessments on endocrinologists and have developed an interest in medico-legal issues. We love to travel – I’ve been to Tibet twice – or closer to home, good burgundies and opera.

Adi Gasdar holds a Distinguished Chair in Molecular Oncology research at Southwestern Medical School in the U.S. and we visited Penny Cave-Smith in San Diego a while ago where she was an anesthetist and is now into baroque music.

Other near contemporaries in Ontario include Chisholm Ogg who recently retired after a stellar career in nephrology at McMaster University. John Wonham is a surgeon in Windsor. Bernard Wolfe is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. He has endowed a research fellowship in health neuroscience at Cambridge.